


Downfall

by glitterburn (orphan_account)



Category: Super Junior
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Cardinal Yesung rules the Vatican, Community: kink_bingo, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-11
Updated: 2012-07-11
Packaged: 2017-11-09 16:04:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/457352
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/glitterburn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>To sin in word is to sin in thought and deed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Downfall

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Crazy_Dumpling](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crazy_Dumpling/gifts).



> For endymionic, who was expecting sleazy jazz bars and instead gets faux Renaissance religious funtiems. For the kink_bingo square ‘dirty talk’.

Jongwoon notices his voice first. Like a pebble caught beneath the soft arch of the foot, it wounds in a subtle way, pulling Jongwoon from his thoughts and devotions within the side chapel and encouraging him to investigate the source of his disquiet.

The choir of the Basilica is practicing, and the sound of their massed voices rises within the echoing space and pours outwards, merging with the crossing beams of sunlight through the arched windows high in the vaulted roof. In the shadows of the body of the church, several of the faithful move to light candles or offer devotions in the chapels. 

In the nave, a young man kneels. He seems not to be a penitent or a casual worshipper. Instead he sings against the choir in counter-melodies.

Jongwoon bows to the presence of God above the altar, then turns his back upon it to examine the young man. 

He is beautiful in an otherworldly sense, and this is what arrests Jongwoon’s steps upon the mosaic floor. The young man has the soft cheeks and full lips of the angels newly painted upon the walls of the Cathedral; he has the same curling hair at the nape, the same lightness of expression. He could be an artist’s model for a creature of fire, but he could not, could never be an angel. Not with those dreaming eyes. Angels do not dream.

Except one did, Jongwoon reminds himself, the hem of his scarlet robes stirring, swirling the memory of bittersweet incense as he starts towards the young man. One angel dared to dream, and it was to be his downfall. Jongwoon wonders if he will regret this approach as Lucifer rued his dismissal from Heaven. 

Before Jongwoon can get too close, the young man rises from his knees and walks away. His pace is swift; he is unencumbered by the full, heavy skirts of a religious, and Jongwoon fears he will lose him through one of the doors in the northern aisle. He does not want to raise his voice, not in this sanctuary, so he puts on a burst of speed, quite unbecoming and wholly undignified for a senior cleric.

His footsteps echo from the vaulted ceiling. The young man glances back over his shoulder, eyes widening as if alarmed at the pursuit.

“Wait,” Jongwoon says. The word rolls the length of the basilica and is drowned by the ecstatic, entwined voices of the choir.

The young man turns. His lips part. He glances sidelong and moves in that direction, then backs up against one of the solid columns supporting the nave.

“Wait,” Jongwoon says again, and the young man slides around the column, the silk and velvet of his garments hushing against the pink-veined marble. As he goes left, Jongwoon goes right, and they meet around the circumference of the pillar. The young man’s eyes are downcast, his lashes as soft and black as summer midnight. A blush mantles his cheeks, as if he is ashamed to be caught playing chase with a cardinal, but there is nothing demure in the curve of his mouth. 

Jongwoon stops himself in the act of reaching out. Better not to touch temptation. He tucks his hands into his sleeves. “You sing well, child.”

The young man lifts his head, a spark of amusement dancing in his expression. Perhaps the compliment caused humour, or perhaps it was the form of address. The young man can be no more than a few years shy of Jongwoon’s own age. God’s child he may be, but as men they are almost equals.

“Thank you.” The young man inclines his head. “Your Eminence.”

Jongwoon stares, all thoughts emptying from his mind. No angel, this, yet not quite a demon, either. “I would know your name, sir.”

The young man gives him a look. “Kyuhyun.”

It is only half a name, but it must suffice for now. Jongwoon repeats it. 

Kyuhyun takes a step away from the column. “I must go.”

“Don’t,” Jongwoon says. “Stay.”

“I cannot.” A look of regret crosses Kyuhyun’s features, and then he adds, “But I will return, if it pleases you.”

“It may please God.”

“There is little difference.” Kyuhyun bows, then looks him full in the face.

For a moment, Jongwoon reads depravity in his eyes, and then it is gone. Kyuhyun smiles, humble and innocent. “Until our next meeting, Your Eminence.”

* * *

“Your Eminence, I have sinned.”

Kyuhyun always begins his confession thus. In the days and weeks he has attended Mass at the Basilica, he has never once prefaced his confession with a request for forgiveness or blessing. He never presents it as an admission of guilt. Instead he offers it as bait, a lure laid out and glittering in plain sight.

Jongwoon should refuse it, but he is a priest before he is a man, and the spiritual welfare of his flock should never be taken lightly. He could direct Kyuhyun to another confessor, but that would be to place another cleric in harm’s way. It is more expedient for him to deal with this. He is a cardinal, his office hard-won, and he will not be turned so easily from his path. 

And so he must listen, and take this as a pious confession even though it is not.

He clears his throat, keeps his gaze fastened on the door of the confessional. Through the fretwork screen he can see the play of light and shadow upon the mosaic floor. The air is stained with the scent of incense, the smoke still lingering. “How have you sinned, my child?”

“I have dreamed of you, Your Eminence. Lustful dreams that ensnare my thoughts even during daylight hours. I have visions of us twined together, skin against skin, and in these dreams I welcome the hard thrust of your flesh into my body, and both of us cry aloud to Heaven with the joy of it.”

Jongwoon curls his hands into fists. Kyuhyun’s dreams always take this form of enticement, and he narrates the details of his visions with great skill, his lewd words conjuring sensations forbidden to Jongwoon by virtue of the robes he wears. He would perjure himself before God if he denied that he was flattered by the attention, but there is danger here, such danger, and Jongwoon hopes he is not committing a greater sin by attempting to remain steadfast in the face of temptation.

“Do you seek forgiveness for this transgression?” Jongwoon asks, keeping his voice level.

Kyuhyun hooks his fingertips through the lattice separating them. “No, Your Eminence. I merely wished to share my sin.”

“A trouble shared is a trouble halved, it is true.”

“Your Eminence, you mistake me.” Kyuhyun leans closer. “I do not offer my confession in the hope of absolution. These dreams and thoughts—they do not trouble me in the spiritual sense, but in the physical sense.”

“Physical,” Jongwoon repeats, a tiny frisson going through him. His mind presents him with images forbidden and damning, Kyuhyun naked and smiling in invitation, spread out upon the discarded scarlet silks of a cardinal’s robes. When he next speaks, Jongwoon’s voice is lower, huskier. “Then you have sinned in deed as well as thought. Tell me of this.”

“Your Eminence, my soul is untainted by the sin to which you allude.”

“And what sin may that be, child?”

“Onanism.” Kyuhyun sighs the word as if he savours it. “The spilling of seed upon the ground. I have not sinned in this manner, Your Eminence; I swear it upon the wounds of Our Lord Jesus Christ.”

“Then these dreams, these visions, both waking and at night... You have not sought relief? You have not taken your own weak flesh into your hand and pleasured yourself?” Jongwoon demands, and now he hears the hitch in his voice, now he’s excited by his own words, and this brings a swoop of shame, hot and thick.

Kyuhyun’s reply is a whisper. “No, Your Eminence.”

“Perhaps your sin is not so very grave, then.” Jongwoon exhales, tips back his head. The confessional is too small, too dark, too warm. “Perhaps these dreams are simply a test of your faith. If you remain unmoved—”

A soft, mocking laugh comes from the other side of the screen. “I did not say I was unmoved, Your Eminence. Quite the opposite, in fact. When these dreams and visions come to me, my flesh responds with eagerness. I burn as if with holy fire, and my cock becomes hard; so _hard_ , Your Eminence. It weeps for want of you, and I ache to touch myself, to rut against the tangled sheets of my featherbed, to grind and rub and seek release while calling Your Eminence’s name.”

Jongwoon aches, too; aches with tension, aware of the smell of his arousal and the drape of his cardinal’s robes over his erection. His breathing shallow, his control rigid, he says, “And yet you deny yourself this release because you strive towards goodness.”

“No, Your Eminence.” Kyuhyun comes closer to the lattice, presses both hands against it. “I deny myself because, without you beside me, _inside_ me, it would be a barren pleasure, and that would be the greater sin.”

* * *

A cardinal must always have spies. Jongwoon sets them on Kyuhyun and awaits their news in the muted halls of his palace, where candlelight glimmers from golden vessels and draughts are kept at bay by tapestries depicting the hunt. 

At length the spies come creeping and inform him that Kyuhyun is the bastard son of a minor nobleman in a neighbouring state. The nobleman is as rich as Croesus, his wealth gained from usury. A sin indeed, but one that seems not to touch Kyuhyun. Though recognised by his father, he has no portion of that nobleman’s estates because he has a younger half-brother, the legitimate heir. Kyuhyun survives on a modest pension and the generosity of his benefactors.

Jongwoon is pleased to learn that, at present, Kyuhyun has no patron. Immediately afterwards, he is troubled by his delight. It is altogether unseemly. 

But still, he cannot in good conscience ignore a man in need of spiritual and temporal assistance, and it is clear, abundantly so, that Kyuhyun requires firm but loving guidance to restore him to the path of righteousness and to stop the words of depravity that daily fall from his mouth.

Those words cannot be borne. Jongwoon sits in his chair of carved rosewood and thinks of the filth that tumbles from Kyuhyun’s lips, the narrations of dreams and visions so wicked that even to call them to mind now brings an ache like the torments of the rack. Worse still is when those words crawl inside his head and infect his own dreams, so he wakes in a sweat with his body alive with heat and a hunger inside him, greedy and grasping. 

He sips hippocras to calm his blood and contemplates the tapestries upon the wall. They show the capture of a unicorn, hobbled by silver chains, and the violent, blood-soaked death of a wild boar. Jongwoon studies both and wonders which beast he has become.

* * *

Another month passes before he succumbs, as he always knew he would. His surrender comes in the confessional as Kyuhyun rests his forehead against the lattice and whispers the hot, shameful words of lust that so excite Jongwoon.

“Enough,” he says, and Kyuhyun falls silent.

The hush is more potent than anything that came before it. Jongwoon struggles against silence and need and finally says, “I must see you in private. Away from this place. Somewhere...”

“You would offer me guidance, Your Eminence?” Kyuhyun does not sound amused or triumphant; merely curious.

“I would offer you much more than that.” Jongwoon bites back all that he wants to say. It would be sacrilege to speak of such unnatural desires here, and yet he knows this is the ideal place to admit them. He is a priest, and this is a confessional. But he holds his tongue, because he cannot confess to a secular. He cannot confess to the man he wants to join in sin, because it would give Kyuhyun too much and he is already afraid of how much power Kyuhyun holds over him.

“There is a place,” Kyuhyun says at length. “Beyond the city walls to the south, where the catacombs lie. An old vineyard, long abandoned. The house is still in good repair. I will await you there.” 

A rolled scrap of paper is pushed through the lattice. Jongwoon takes it, unfurls it to reveal precise directions. The ink is smudged, the surface of the paper uneven as if it has been folded and unfolded many times. He wonders how long Kyuhyun has had this note, how long he has waited for this day.

“Name the hour,” Jongwoon says, just as the bells of the Basilica begin to strike.

“Tomorrow, after None.” Kyuhyun scratches at the screen keeping them apart. “Your Eminence, give me your hand.”

Jongwoon presses it against the lattice. He closes his eyes, breathes in the scent of arousal and incense, and moans when Kyuhyun dabs his tongue-tip through the gaps in the screen to taste the centre of Jongwoon’s palm. 

* * *

The city resounds to the tolling of the bells for None. Dressed not in scarlet but in black garments, the simplicity of their cut belied by the richness of the fabric, Jongwoon spurs his hired nag through streets running with weeds. Though he has heard tales of the city’s poor quarters, he has never had cause to venture here. Now he has left behind the travertine palaces of his peers, he is faced with ramshackle tenements and the stink of poverty, the sight of crumbling masonry and shattered roads. Vermin, both two-legged and four-legged, pause to stare at him with bright, feverish eyes. 

It is said that wolves prowl these districts at night. Jongwoon can believe it. He kicks his heels into the sides of his mount, urging the horse forward. He is as eager to leave this place as he is to reach his rendezvous.

An ancient road leads south, lined with the markers of the dead. Once a triumphal way, over the centuries it has become a burial ground. Above the earth are the tombs of the wealthy inhabitants of the original pagan city; below ground, scraped into the living rock, are the catacombs, final resting place of martyrs and saints and other good, pious men and women.

Jongwoon breathes more easily once he is free of the shadow of the city walls. The road is wide and not as busy as he expected, though it bears the marks in rutted earth and worn marble of carts and footprints. Perhaps at dawn and dusk this way is full of travellers, but at this hour there is nothing but the landscape, dark green cypresses against fields overgrown with wildflowers.

The vineyard is two miles from the city gate, a little to the east of the ancient road along a dirt track. A low stone wall tumbles, blurring the demarcation of the land. The vines are untended, last season’s grapes heavy and furred or burst open upon the ground in dried splashes of dark red. The sweet scent of decay hangs in the air, mixed with the smell of mortar dust and parched earth.

The horse’s hooves echo in the uneven courtyard in front of the farmhouse. Jongwoon dismounts and tethers the animal beside a trough of green-flecked water. The farmhouse door is ajar. He nudges it further open and goes inside, breathing in stillness and the warmth of aged wood. At the other side of the kitchen is a doorway covered by a piece of tanned hide. He pushes it aside and looks into a small room illuminated only by the narrow slit of a window. Kyuhyun waits naked upon a mattress, linen sheets turned down around him and fresh with the fragrance of lavender.

“Your Eminence,” he says, and holds out his arms.

Jongwoon stares at his body, at the glimmer of olive oil already applied between his thighs, at the proud thrust of his cock; at his smile, welcoming, devilish.

“Take me, Your Eminence,” Kyuhyun demands. “Possess me. Drive into me and hold nothing back.”

Madness descends. Jongwoon rends his garments like a penitent and falls upon Kyuhyun, claims him in one brutal thrust.

“Oh, my lord.” There’s a shivering quality to Kyuhyun’s voice, breathless and excited. “Fuck me. I beg you, punish me for leading you into this transgression.”

Jongwoon pins him down and shafts into him, over and over. It is sinful, of course it is, but that is why he finds such pleasure in it. His release, so long denied, taunts him still, and he twists Kyuhyun upon the mattress, arranges him like a doll, first in one position and then in another, and he grunts, mindless, animalistic, works deeper into the willing body beneath him, flesh buried inside flesh. 

They rut and sweat and cry out for annihilation. Kyuhyun reaches orgasm twice, his face alight with pleasure, but climax continues to evade Jongwoon, slips and slides away from him, leaving him frustrated and desperate. It’s only when Kyuhyun straddles him, thighs spread and knees drawn up as he grinds down in a hard, circling motion, that Jongwoon feels a flicker of far-distant relief.

The flicker becomes a torrent when Kyuhyun gasps, “Oh my lord, you are damned, we are both damned together, we shall _burn_.”

Only then does ecstasy grip him, snapping his spine and burrowing into his brain to bring the collapse into oblivion.

* * *

When Jongwoon comes to his senses, he realises they are not alone. Guardsmen in armour crowd at the doorway, their voices rich with amused contempt. He sits up, snatching at the sheet to cover himself and throwing out angry words, invoking his position as a cardinal to demand respect and privacy.

The guardsmen laugh. They wear the colours of a neighbouring state, crimson and black, and the device embroidered in thread-of-gold upon their silks shows a monster devouring a child. Jongwoon gazes at it. He knows what it must mean, but he does not believe it until a tall man with the same dreaming eyes as Kyuhyun steps past the escort of his guardsmen. He looks down at the makeshift bed and makes a pleased sound.

“Well met, Kyuhyun,” the man says. “As promised, you captured a cardinal.”

Kyuhyun kneels at the foot of the mattress, smiling and unashamed of his nakedness. He permits the other man to caress his hair, a lazy gesture that speaks of long acquaintance. Glancing at Jongwoon over his shoulder, Kyuhyun says, “This is my brother Minho, my father’s legitimate heir. He would be a bishop, Your Eminence. I assured him that you would help him achieve his true calling in the heart of the Church.”

Jongwoon stares, his thoughts in turmoil. He recognises depravity in Kyuhyun’s eyes, depravity and the fire of ambition. But it is far too late to heed such warnings. He has already fallen.


End file.
